The nineties was a decade which provided us with some of the finest and most important films in cinema history. It started with Anthony Hopkins managing to bag himself an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Hannibal Lector in Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991) despite only being on screen for barely sixteen minutes. We also saw Michael Mann provide us with perhaps the crime epic with 1995’s Heat; and two years later James Cameron gave audiences Titanic, the film that broke box office and Oscar records alike.

Let’s also not forget (how could we) that Cameron had already produced one of the all-time great sequels with Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) at the beginning of the decade; and he certainly wasn’t the only director giving us blockbuster cinema at the time. Steven Spielberg thrilled crowds with Jurassic Park (1993) and in the same year, unleashed Schindler’s List, his astonishing adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s novel.

The nineties also saw the introduction of Quentin Tarantino to the big screen, as he provided arguably three of the best films of the decade in Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997). The decade closed with Sam Mendes releasing the masterpiece that is American Beauty (1999), and all these films mentioned are but a drop in the ocean of brilliant cinema that the decade gave us.

But there were plenty of excellent films to be found elsewhere; that perhaps didn’t get the time or credit they deserved with the deluge of releases. In this list we take a look back at ten hugely underappreciated gems of the nineties; all of them in need of reappraisal, or indeed a first-time viewing.

1. Baraka (1992)

Not strictly a film with a synopsis in the traditional sense, Ron Fricke’s mind-blowing piece of work is a non-narrative documentary shot across 24 countries on 70mm film. It’s a visual meditation on humanity, nature, and spirituality with astonishing visuals from start to finish.

There’s ancient ruins, religious ceremonies, industrial cityscapes, natural landscapes and more, all spliced together with music, there’s not a spoken word in its runtime. Fricke’s film makes you feel the scale of human civilization, and the fragility of it at the same time. Indeed, Baraka feels even more prescient looking back in a post internet age; its visuals of global culture, much of which may be completely new to you, are startling and spectacular in equal measure.

Ranging between ancient and modern, Baraka gives you a true scope of humanity, and how it’s impossible to have a full appreciation of everything that unfurls on our planet. There’s no argument or narrative, just pure human life, and it’s unlike anything you’ll have seen before.

2. The Pelican Brief (1993)

Alan J. Pakula, perhaps the Godfather of the paranoia thriller, offers up another, this time based on the John Grisham novel of the same name. Julia Roberts is Darby Shaw, a law student who writes a speculative legal brief suggesting a motive for the assassination of two supreme court justices; but when the brief gets into the wrong hands, people start dying and suddenly she’s on the run. Denzel Washington’s investigative journalist Gray Grantham gets drawn into the story and helps her out, and what unfurls is a taut and tight thriller, one that’s frequently overlooked and dismissed as middle of the road.

Washington and Roberts elevate it above that, and in the hands of Pakula, The Pelican Brief becomes much more than your average on-the-run thriller. This is a proper grown-up thriller with a genuinely interesting and complex conspiracy, never fully tipping into action movie territory. We’re used to seeing Washington in these sorts of thrillers, but Julia Roberts puts in one of her best performances here, pulling you into her panicked world as things spiral out of control.

The Pelican Brief doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, and keeps you gripped from minute one. While it might reach the heights of Pakula’s Klute (1971) or All the President Men (1976), this is a thoroughly underrated thriller which deserves more attention.

3. Unlawful Entry (1992)

Although Unlawful Entry doesn’t quite hit the heights of the superb Breakdown (1997), it edges Executive Decision (1996) in terms of Kurt Russell led nineties thrillers. Michael (Russell) and his wife Karen (Madeline Stowe) have their house broken into, and the intruder threatens Karen with a knife before escaping. The break-in is investigated by Ray Liotta’s Officer Pete Davies and his partner, and initially Pete seems very helpful in helping the couple set up a security system, and slowly becoming a good friend to the couple, even taking Michael out on a patrol and appearing as a guest at Karen’s primary school.

Unsurprisingly, Pete slowly becomes obsessive with Karen and takes it upon himself to attempt to remove Michael from the equation. It’s an excellent performance from Liotta, one of the late man’s finest, and the film runs with it; it takes a pulpy premise and uses it to say something real about power and vulnerability. Jonathan Kaplan provides something here that despite knowing exactly what it is, gives you a lot more bang for your buck than you might think.

4. Dream Lover (1994)

James Spader might well be a man known for delving into the erotic thriller, but Nicholas Kazan’s Dream Lover is certainly one of his lesser known. Starring Twin Peaks alumni Madchen Amick, Spader’s Ray, a recently divorced architect, meets Amick’s Lena, a beautiful and mysterious woman who he falls hard for, and the pair end up marrying very quickly. It’s only after this that he begins to notice things about her that don’t add up, and everything quickly begins to fall apart.

Sure, this sort of thing has been done many times before, and with it coming only two years after Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, one could be forgiven for dismissing Dream Lover as a Verhoeven cash in. But Dream Lover has some surprises up its sleeve, not least the genuine intrigue that it causes in its unfurling storyline. It’s also an excellent femme fatale tale, one that could easiy qualify as a Brian De Palma vehicle, although that suggestion perhaps does Kazan a disserivce.

Dream Lover is surprisingly thrilling piece of work; both Spader and Amick are absolutely terrific, completely selling you on their characters and ultimately give you an ending that’s every bit as satisfying as it is surprising.

5. The Funeral (1996)

Abel Ferrara has many strings to his impressive bow, although his mid nineties gangster flick is one that often falls by the way side. Christopher Walken, Chris Penn and Vincent Gallo play the Tempio brothers, violent gangsters in 1930’s New York. Johnny (Gallo) turns up dead, and at the funeral, Ray (Walken) and Chez (Penn)start looking for who killed him, convinced it was a rival.

Ferrara unfurls proceedings in flashbacks, unpacking the brother’s history as we learn about the choices made that led to this very point, and the truth that is eventually learned of what happened doesn’t help anyone. Ferrara’s film is more interested in what violence does to his characters rather than the violence itself, making The Funeral a far more interesting piece of work than it might have been.

Ferrara’s relatively brief gangster pic is well worth tracking down, all the performances are effective which is vital in such an intimate film; and although it doesn’t hit the heights of the films it’s attempting to veer away from, this is a film that remains sorely underrated, and deserves to be championed.